


Epic of Gilgamesh

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Novel Discussions [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: First Impressions, Literature Discussions, M/M, Quotations, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: “I thought it was trite.”Thomas blinks.  Once.  Twice.  He looks up and meets John’s eyes.  Challenging and cool.  “You thought...the Epic of Gilgamesh... was...was trite?” Thomas isn’t entirely sure he understands what John’s saying.  James had said he was a smart man.  A smart man who had a quick mind and an engaging wit.  Someone that— Oh.   Oh.  Thomas grins, savage and willful.  It’s met with a similar grin in response.  “Tell me then,” Thomas suggests calmly.  “What you find so trite about it.”“A man who wishes to live forever?  Hardly an original tale.”“It isn’t about that,” Thomas retorts harshly.  “The story is about...about freedom.  About peace.  About forgiveness and returning to a state of understanding after a journey.  Of knowing that your story is not one that will be told by you, but by others through the deeds you do.  That those deeds will give you everlasting life, not an assumed blessing from the gods.”John nods along as Thomas speaks.  Indulgent.  As though he were the parent and Thomas the child.  “As I said,” he murmurs somberly.  “Trite.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally when I wrote Antigone I couldn't get over how wonderful it would be to see Thomas arguing literature with John, and then suddenly the idea wouldn't let loose. This series is going to be various moments in their lives where they discuss books, literature, novels, the written word, or anything in between and their budding friendship during it. 
> 
>  
> 
> You can read the Epic of Gilgamesh here: http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf
> 
> And you can read about it in summation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
> 
> You don't need to read either to understand this.

The first time they meet, Thomas is returning home from a day’s work outside.  James is busy tending to something with the neighbors, there’s a fence that’s down and some missing cattle somewhere.  James is far more willing to talk to these people than Thomas is.  Strange, all things considered.  After all this time, Thomas feels far more comfortable retreating from their eyes than standing before them.  Once, he would have relished in the chance.  Now, he prefers to hide.  Ducking into the cool dark of their home, eager to set about making dinner.  

And he would have done just that, if he hadn’t noticed the man standing at his bookshelf.  Looking at the texts that are collected there.  Head bent somewhat.  Body leaning on a crutch.  Thomas is tempted to call out to James.  Let him know that someone’s there.  But he doesn’t.  Not yet.  “You’re John Silver,” Thomas accuses.  The man at the bookshelf turns.  

There’s a sharp piercing light in his eye.  Something dark and explicitly dangerous.  Something cold and violent.  His skin is dark and tanned.  Hair curling in ringlets around his shoulders.  His immediate bangs are pulled back of course.  Kept free from his eyes and leaving the remainder of his mane perfect and unassuming.  

“What gave it away?” John asks him, though from how he moves his crutch it’s clear he knows the answer.

“No one else would be so bold,” Thomas replies instead.  Refusing to admit that the impediment had caught his eye first.  It’s impolite at the very least, and he has no malice in his heart for this man.  Not truly.  

A faint smile seems to pull at John’s face, and Thomas considers that the man could be considered handsome.  He considers, too, that John Silver is far younger than he initially assumed.  James had felt like a child all those years ago, just reaching up into his position at the Navy while Thomas felt comfortable in his Lordship.  The years that separated _them_ felt like a gaping hole at times.  Pleasant possibilities of one always chasing the others.  And yet when true separation drove them apart, when it wasn’t the act of God keeping James from being born into Thomas’ world, but rather the ire of a father sending them to opposite ends of the Earth...Thomas learned what real distance was.

This boy, now, he’s younger than James was then.  Far, _far,_ younger than Thomas is now.  There’s an ache building in Thomas’ lower back just looking at how John stands.  Leaning against the crutch in silence.  Absorbing Thomas as Thomas absorbs him.  Learning through sight since neither seems prepared to fully speak their mind.  John’s an analytical force of nature the likes of which James has spoken only fondly of.  Endlessly fond.  Endlessly fond in the way proud parents are of their children once they are taken from their bosom.  Left to grow alone in the wild thorny thicket of society.  

 _He’ll die out there,_ James had predicted once.  And he’s right.  Thomas looks at John now, and knows James is almost certainly right.  Whatever shred of light James had found within this child of a man, will be snuffed out by the dark tethers of reality.  Thomas doesn’t see the goodness that James saw.  Doesn’t see the teasing gentleness that James reported back with utter sincerity.

He sees only a Pirate King.  Standing at Thomas’ bookshelf.  Watching Thomas watch him.  Too young for the knowledge within those eyes.  And too tired to know that once there had been a thing called peace.  “Are you staying for dinner?” Thomas asks.

Silver smiles.  “No,” he says.  “I’ll be leaving soon.”

Well.  “I’m preparing some now.  Join me?”  Thomas turns his back to a man who’s killed an untold number of people.  And he feels no fear as he walks into the kitchen.  John follows silently.  Crutch tapping loudly against the floorboards.  Heavy and echoing.  Like a mallet against a drum.

The stew Thomas intends to make is a simple one.  Vegetables only.  A pot can be set to boil in a matter of moments and it can continue on in that fashion while James finishes appeasing the neighbors with their strife.  John watches him for a moment in the doorway.  Considering, most likely, why Thomas is so supremely unbothered by his presence.  It’s not hard to understand, if John were willing to admit the answer to himself.  

James has told him all there is to know about John Silver.  Thomas has no reason to be afraid.  If John wished him harm, he’d likely be dead.  But killing him, or harming him at the very least, _now,_ is more counterproductive than any possible outcome James can consider.  And James has considered several thus far.  

“I’ve some salted pork,” John announces suddenly.  He turns and thumps his way back towards the bookshelf, returning moments later with a satchel that he has draped over his shoulder.  He reaches in and retrieves a cloth wrapped offering.  Setting it on the table between them like a tithe.  Thomas reaches for it, unwrapping the cloth and inspecting the meat.

It’s from John’s ship, he’s certain.  However John arrived here, a ship was almost certainly involved.  And this, his daily ration.  “You didn’t eat it before?”  Thomas questions curiously.  It’s at least a day’s walk from the harbor.  The temptation to drive further inland was strong, but try as he might to release the sea from his mind, James couldn’t quite bring himself to leave it entirely.  

 _Odysseus,_ Thomas thinks, _can go fuck himself._

John shrugs one shoulder.  He doesn’t reply.  Instead he fetches a knife from the table and then a potato not long after.  He peels without pause, finger making quick work of the spud.  Thomas contemplates his meal and starts working out how to alter it.  An unnecessary process once it becomes clear John intends to take over entirely.  

For a _King_ of sorts, John is surprisingly deft in a kitchen.  He cuts and dices and slices and cubes faster than many of Thomas’ staff growing up.  Left with little else to do but watch, Thomas does just that.  He watches as John prepares the meal.  Silence filling the space between them.  Not uncomfortable, certainly, merely present.

There is more in John’s satchel than simply salted pork.  Thomas can just see the bulge of an apple.  Perhaps a few trinkets here or there.  A pouch or two of something personal.  And maybe—yes.  Certainly, a book.  A very thin book that John pulls out once he catches Thomas snooping.  

He hands it over without so much as looking up from the stack of vegetables he’s created.  Leaning even more on his crutch as he adjusts his weight.  Thomas takes it to be polite, and John immediately returns to his work.  “He said you liked to read,” John offers vaguely.

It’s the kind of comment Thomas never really cared much for.  Off hand and blatantly obvious.  That John felt like illuminating it at all seemed strange.  Why else would he have brought a book?  Why else would he have brought— _“The Epic of Gilgamesh?”_ Thomas frowns as he looks at the cover.  Battered and worn by the sea.  The first few pages are crinkled. The spine is somewhat loose.  It’d need to be rethreaded.  Perhaps repaired good and proper.  There are other collected works, of course.  The _Epic_ being too short to be worth binding on its own.  But the book itself is still quite narrow.  Fragile in its quaintness.

James teased him once that he should learn how to bind books on his own, as he reads so frequently it would only make sense.  Thomas suspects that James is quite right in that regard.  Turning the book over, he can already spot a few places that he could make some alterations.  Ways he could adjust the spine, repair the pages.  Sturdy up the structure.  

The print is of good quality despite the exterior's poor condition. The words clearly legible and unaffected by smudge or grime.  Thomas read the text once in Eton.  It was a class that he took with some degree of interest, and he’d been far more interested by the young man who sat opposite him than the text itself.  That fall had been an awakening of two passions.  One for the written word, and the other—for the mind of one with whom he could digest such wonders with enthusiasm.  

“Have you read it?” Thomas inquires, skipping through pages to find passages he’d long since forgotten about.  He’d missed these sentences.  These turns of phrase.  He cannot rightly recall if he’d ever discussed this work with anyone since Eton.  He strains to remember if it had been in his and Miranda’s library, but he doesn’t think it was.  He lost his personal copy in a pond after he’d had a tussle with a beautiful boy with golden hair.  Far more interested in the sounds he’d made after hours of reciting poetry than he had been in the book.  

A fault he’d rectified over the years.  The books must always come first, as they are permanent.  The people...they come and go.  

Closing his eyes, Thomas needs to take a moment to shake the thought free.  No.  That’s not true any longer.  People are more important.  It’s only...they’re harder to hold onto than he’d previously imagined.  And sometimes it hurts too much to try.  

“I have, actually.”  John’s voice snaps him from his melancholic musings.  Thomas blinks rapidly, dragging himself up from the past so he can look at the man.  He wonders, faintly, if John’s a Captain now in his own right.  If he’s retired from piracy.  If he’s still a King to some, the future Queen’s consort to others.  Thomas has little idea how to address this man.  

But his tone of voice is so familiar, that it brings a smile to Thomas’ face.  For a moment, John sounded so much like James.  A James who huffed in public and made a comment about how his lack of education must be showing.  A James who wore one shame like armor, to hide another shame that nearly burned them all alive.  

“What did you think of it?” Thomas asks as he cradles the book close.  John moves the vegetables into the pot for boiling.  He starts a fire in the fireplace with a grace that Thomas wouldn’t have anticipated.  He cooks without comment.  

Idly, Thomas considers that James should be back within the next hour or so.  If John has no intentions of staying for dinner, then he’s pushing his luck if he doesn’t wish to be seen by James.  Something that Thomas is all too aware may be a possibility.  They haven’t discussed the obvious contention between them yet.  The question that Thomas knows must be answered at some point.  After all, he and James are no longer on a prison farm in Savannah, and John is so clearly aware of that fact.  And yet, it lingers unsaid.  Neither offering explanation and neither seeming interested in drifting towards that conversation.

By the time John looks up at him, Thomas has almost forgotten the question in the first place.  He’s reopened the book and started skimming the first few lines.  

 

> _I WILL proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story._

“I thought it was trite.”

Thomas blinks.  Once.  Twice.  He looks up and meets John’s eyes.  Challenging and cool.  “You thought...the _Epic of Gilgamesh..._ was...was _trite?”_ Thomas isn’t entirely sure he understands what John’s saying.  James had said he was a smart man.  A smart man who had a quick mind and an engaging wit.  Someone that— Oh.   _Oh._  Thomas grins, savage and willful.  It’s met with a similar grin in response.  “Tell me then,” Thomas suggests calmly.  “What you find so _trite_ about it.”

“A man who wishes to live forever?  Hardly an original tale.”  

“It isn’t about _that,”_ Thomas retorts harshly.  John just smiles.  Sea weary eyes showing no signs of comprehension.  Sagging at the bottoms with the raging exhaustion that had haunted James those first few nights in Savannah but have now been lifted by weeks of rest.  Months of peace.  “The story is about...about freedom.  About peace.  About forgiveness and returning to a state of understanding after a journey.  Of knowing that your story is not one that will be told by you, but by others through the deeds you do.  That those deeds will give you everlasting life, not an assumed blessing from the gods.”

John nods along as Thomas speaks.  Indulgent.  As though he were the parent and Thomas the child.  “As I said,” he murmurs somberly.  “Trite.”

It’s the argument of an incompetent.  But that’s hardly the point.  John didn’t arrive here today, while James was gone, to give Thomas a book and insult it’s words.  He gave it for something else, and Thomas feels duty bound to indulge the man his request.  Turning to a page near the end of the book, Thomas scans for the passage he only vaguely recalls.  It’s been so long since he...no wait.  There.  There it is.  

“'You were given the kingship, such was your destiny,” he looks up at meets John’s eyes, and watches as they flutter and turn towards the fire.  Neck bending ever so slightly.  Fingers tightening around his crutch.  “Everlasting life was _not_ your destiny,” Thomas strains.  His heart has started to beat painfully in his chest, and he wonders faintly how long John’s had this book.  Wonders why now.  After all this time.  Still, he presses forward.  Unafraid of this challenge.  Unwilling to compromise.  “Because of this do not be sad at heart, do not be grieved or oppressed. He has given you power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness and the light of mankind. He has given you unexampled supremacy over the people, victory in battle from which no fugitive returns, in forays and assaults from which there is no going back. But do not abuse this power, deal justly with your servants in the palace, deal justly before the face of the Sun.”

“As I said,” John murmurs quietly.  “Trite.” Thomas closes the book.  He’s hypersensitive to the feeling of the pages beneath his fingertips.  The warped curve of the spine.  “His actions have led him to ruin.  His friend is dead.  His attempts—failures.”

“His kingdom safe.  His people, free.  They loved him enough to sing his song long after his death.”

“What does it matter to those he lost along the way?”  And that’s the question that John truly wants answered.  The one that he doesn’t trust James to tell him honestly.  The one he’s come to Thomas for, exhausted and alone.  Miserable and offering books in hopes of inspiring conversation with a man he’s never met, rather than seek the truth on his own.  

Thomas steps forward, and immediately John retreats.  Shifting and moving back toward his satchel.  It’s collected and he’s making his way toward the door without so much as a by your leave.  “It matters,” Thomas tells him.  “Gilgamesh mattered to the ones he lost.  And they mattered to him.”

John’s back is as broken as the spine Thomas cradles between his palms.  A warped and sloping thing.  His head is tucked low.  There’s sorrow in his frame.  Worn and dilapidated.  Thomas yearns to reach out.  Touch his arm.  Tell him to stay.  James will be back soon.  And then he can hear the words for himself.  Can receive the forgiveness he so clearly wants, but so tragically avoids.  But they’re not speaking of John and his actions.

They’re speaking of Gilgamesh, and Thomas knows better than to break this spell.  He’s caught John here and now, and if he wishes to proceed he must do so carefully.  “Enkidu had been sent to destroy Gilgamesh initially, but they befriended one another.  Loved one another.  Cared deeply for one another.  And despite Gilgamesh being named king, despite the tragedy that tore them apart, that love still persisted.  It still continued.  There is no tragedy in Gilgamesh’s tale.  Enkidu’s...loss...is merely another chapter in a story that leads to the inevitable conclusion that the actions of a wise king are spoken about until the end of time.  And the love for that king does not fade.”

John’s fingers tighten around his crutch.  It’s the only sign he’s heard what Thomas is saying.  “Enkidu loved Gilgamesh...and should he have survived their parting, he would have loved him still.  Would have wanted to see him—”

“I do apologize if I’ve disturbed you this evening.  Please do enjoy yourselves.”  The mistake falls dead in Thomas’ mouth and he watches dumbly as John walks out the door.  He’s still standing there, long after John has disappeared, when James eventually comes home.  The stew is boiling nicely behind him, filling their house with warmth and tenderness.

With love and apologies that James will not hear from the one he deserves to hear them from.  

James spies the salted pork on the table and smiles at Thomas.  “When did you get this?” he asks kindly.  And Thomas has to force himself to tuck the thin little book into the folds of his clothes.  Push thoughts of the _Epic_ to the side, and smile at his lover.  

“Just today,” he says.  “Dinner is almost ready.  Please, tell me about this fence?”

James almost certainly noticed Thomas’s behavior, but he says nothing about it.  He lets it go, and he tells a tale of his own.  They sit side by side, in their moment of heavenly bliss, safe from the terrors and horrors of reality, and Thomas tries not to imagine what a more perfect tale to their story would be.

He tries not to think about the end of the _Epic._ The final poem that casts uncertainty to the fate of the beloved King.  And the steady fear that’s begun to grow in his heart for a man he’d only just recently met.

 

 

> _The king has laid himself down and will not rise again, The Lord of Kullab will not rise again; He overcame evil, he will not come again; Though he was strong of arm he will not rise again;_
> 
> _He had wisdom and a comely face, he will not come again; He is gone into the mountain, he will not come again; On the bed of fate he lies, he will not rise again, Front the couch of many colours he will not come again._

 

Trite, John had said.  He’d called the _Epic_ trite.

Unimportant, and irrelevant.

Thomas cannot help but wonder why he feels it’s so unimportant, when in the end: it’s more than obvious how easily their stories aligned.  And more than that, he tries not to imagine what will happen when John lays himself down, and chooses not to rise again.   

  


**Author's Note:**

> If there's a period appropriate story you'd like John/Thomas to discuss next, please feel free to let me know and I'll see what I can do. 
> 
> You can read the Epic of Gilgamesh here: http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf
> 
> And you can read about it in summation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh


End file.
